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StinkmixSix – Reckless Versioneering

Going back to ’99/2000ish (I suspect the former as this has a heap of sounds, noises and ting that ended up on the Phase 5 album and I wouldn’t have used them straight afterwards) this is a straight down the line, no argument dubwise versionary tale. A bit of a stroll through the days, this runs from vintage JA biz and golden age bounty through to some dancehall b-sides, UK flavour and homeland soundsystem faves – boom and shot your honour. Despite many hours spent descratching the big clicks and pops, there’s some still scratchy original pressings as well as the pick of re-issue bunch (nope – not proud or fussy on that tip) including the insanely epic, nocturnal niceness of Augustus Pablo’s extenderated Pablo In Moonlight City.
Like many, I’m sure my early reggaematic education was aided by those Trojan compilation tapes with those cringey covers and all the big chart hits of the early 70’s like Young, Gifted And Black, Everything I Own and all that gloriously cheezy shit that was at the same time, utterly undeniable, brilliant Caribbean pop. The Heptones Book Of Rules (based on the poem A Bag of Tools by R.L.Sharpe – it’s at the bottom of the post because they are words that can’t be said enough times) was always a (constitutionally sturdier) favourite amongst that company, and the dub just sends me to this day. From then on it’s straight into the meat of the matter with Tubbys, Pablo, Winston Riley, the Hoo Kim brothers etc and all manner of exceptionally equipped engineers laying it down, proper oper.
Moving through a beatific barrage of dancehall flipsides there’s a little bit of a canter through some indispensable UK soundsystem slaughterers like Lloyd Coxsone’s unconquerable Homeward Bound, and a brace of the multitude of earthshakers that could have been chosen from the Twinkle Brothers back cat. Topping off with a pair each from Joe Gibbs and King Tubby we are, as they say…. spent (aside from a loopy little outrotito).
All of those good dubmatical floorquakers and I laid off indulging in infinitesimal Perry trails or multitudinous Wackies tangents or…. or …. or… maybe its about time for another dubwise mix & blend from the stinking bunker…we’ll see.
Cover taken from a Nat Geo piece on NZ, one of the best I reckon, and the first to be strung together by the estimable hands of Chan before being given a spruce up and rework for this renking resissue in a digital style and fashion..